Where Colors Blend Into Sounds

Tzveta Kassabova creates an interactive environment for the audience, with dancers acting as guides through experiences of taste, touch and other sensations. The work plays with perceptions and shifting realities as it incorporates different approaches to scale and proximity. Corridors, entryways, and rooms are strung together, leading the audience into a maze of unexpected situations that are designed to evoke sensory memories and associations

Shifting cultivation, livelihoods and change : a study of agricultural decisions in Xieng Ngeun District, Lao PDR : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy in Development Studies at Massey University

Shifting cultivation has long provided a livelihood for upland farmers in the tropics. However, recent years have seen increasing political, environmental and economic pressure on these farming systems and those who practice them. In the Lao PDR, shifting cultivation is a priority development issue; government policy is to replace it with sedentary forms of agriculture by the year 2010. Alternatives to existing practices are being researched and extended to farmers through both the public and private sector, and farmers are faced with an increasing range of choices for their livelihoods, which remain largely agriculturally-based. Their responses to these new opportunities, and their ability to take advantage of them, will be important to the sustainability of their livelihoods into the future. Recognising that agricultural changes take place in the context of people's livelihoods, this thesis applies a livelihoods approach to the study of household agricultural decisions in the Lao PDR. It investigates farmer responses to introduced forage technologies for the intensification of livestock production in four upland villages of Xieng Ngeun District, in order to explore the relationship between livelihoods and change. Many aspects of people's livelihoods are found to shape their decisions. In particular, access to resources can be important in the ability to take advantage of opportunities. Activities such as livestock raising require an initial cash investment that may preclude poorer households from specialising in them; thus these households are less able to benefit from livestock-related technologies. Households' existing livelihood strategies and the resulting livelihood outcomes also influence their ability and desire to intensify livestock production through managed forages. The wider context within which livelihoods are constructed may both facilitate and constrain change in a particular direction. In addition to those issues commonly identified in livelihoods frameworks, other factors also need to be considered. The importance of farmer perceptions in particular is highlighted and it is suggested that this, along with the characteristics of the technology itself in relation to people's livelihood situation, be included in the framework for application to the study of agricultural change. Finally, the thesis finds the livelihoods approach to be a useful and practical way of focusing attention on issues at the local level and placing rural people at the centre of development-related analysis

Fathers as Sexuality Educators: Aspirations and Realities. An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis

Men can play a significant role in teaching their children about sexuality but fathers’ practices and perceptions in this domain remain under explored. This study presents an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of eight fathers’ perceptions and practices in educating their ten-year-old children about physical maturation, reproduction and relationships. A Foucauldian analysis with a focus on governmentality and biopower revealed tensions and contradictions between the fathers’ aspirations and their realities, which appeared to be underpinned by the dynamic, contradictory, shifting, plural nature of fatherhood identities. Whilst fathers wished to adhere to the cultural imperative for father–child emotional closeness, a disparity between their ambitions and their conduct emerged. Care appeared to be a deeply gendered concept for the fathers and despite their aspirations for an intimate relationship with their children, gendered norms for motherhood and fatherhood prevailed resulting in passivity in their role as sexuality educators. The study concludes by arguing that challenges to structures and subcultural contexts, which may deter fathers from fully engaging with their sons and daughters in this aspect of communication are required

‘Us’ and ‘Them’: Ulster Loyalist Perspectives on the IRA and Irish Republicanism

This article draws on data from one-to-one interviews with members and former members of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), Ulster Defence Association (UDA), Red Hand Commando (RHC), Ulster Political Research Group (UPRG) and the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) to explore the dynamic and fluid perceptions of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Sinn Fein among Ulster Loyalists. The article will illustrate now attitudes and perceptions are influenced by the shifting political landscape in Northern Ireland as Ulster Loyalists come to terms with the new realities created by the peace-process, security normalization, decommissioning and the rise in the threat of dissident Republican violence. The also illustrate that these perceptions are not purely antagonistic and based on the creation of negative stereotypical ‘enemy images’ fuelled by decades of conflict, but pragmatic, bound to societal and local events and influenced intragroup attitudes and divisions in addition to the expected conflictual ingroup vs. outgroup relationships. Finally, the paper will explore how Loyalists employ Republicanism and the transformation of the Provisional IRA in particular, as a mirror or benchmark to reflect on their own progress since 1994

Past Spaces and Revisits in Transnational Poetry: The Sojourning Returnee of Shirley Geok-Lin Lim’s Do You Live In?

This essay explores the shifting vantage-point of a temporary returnee and an observant sojourner in the poetry of Shirley Geok-Lin Lim. Situating Lim’s recent collection, Do You Live In? (2015) both in the context of her renewed migrations to different places in Asia and within a widening transnational project of reconceptualizing traditional dichotomies of the diasporic, a critical discussion of her latest poetry enables us to trace how reflections on memory and place in a world of growing global change and exchanges can contribute to an awareness of the everyday experiences of the transnational. The lyric form allows Lim to express the emotional experience of the moment, and the collection as a whole consequently produces a juxtaposition of divergent emotions: snapshots of returns and the reordering of memory. While the bounded self is located in what Lim terms a “place of nomadism,” the heteroglossia of individual lyrics expresses the multiplicity of influences and their re-appropriation. In her seemingly most localized poems, personal memories encounter – and rip apart – heritage nostalgia to engage self-consciously with transnational experience

Ignorance in a knowledge economy: Unknowing the foreigner in the neoliberal condition

Globalisation has thrown imagination and creativity into turmoil. The creative space of tertiary teaching struggles with conflicting ideals, as real and imagined boundaries are crossed, and educational borderlines change. Immigrant early childhood teachers have flocked to Aotearoa New Zealand in recent years, supported and desired by immigration policy and neoliberal institutional needs. In this paper I draw on Kristeva's (1991) suggestion that there is a foreigner within each of us, and that it is only by "recognizing him within ourselves" that "we are spared detesting him in himself' (p. 1). I problematize the notion of knowledge in relation to immigrant student teachers' self-formation as academic subjects with the suggestion of unknowability and ignorance as a realistic orientation to subvert the need for certainty. I represent the uncertainty of the erratic, seductive neoliberal condition with Bauman's notion of liquid modernity, and argue that knowledge of the other, even if it were possible, would be superseded and obsolete as rapidly as it is acquired. Afresh conceptualization of ignorance stretches the imagination of what is, inherently, a boundaryless educational space

FM contract relationships: from mobilisation to sustainable partnership

Purpose / theory Outsourcing is a fundamental business model for the Facilities Management (FM) industry. To enable sustained mutual success the parties involved must seek to understand the unique, socially constructed, and often highly complex situational realities of the organisational ecologies they are engaged in. The FM industry can unlock improved performance and strategic credibility through an appreciation of the need for different conversations. Design / methodology / approach Findings from two recent cases are considered. Data from two different client-contractor relationship situations was collected utilising a critical ethnographic research methodology; a phenomenological paradigm that acknowledges knowledge as socially constructed through language. A variant on Scott-Morgan‟s unwritten-rules coding method was used to analyse the data and justify the prevalent themes and issues presented. Findings Findings include the role of perceptions and assertions in the construction of social realities, change management implications, and how these impact on the traditional view of the client/contractor relationship. Ethnographic findings are typically context specific, therefore generalisations must be carefully considered. The key findings are however substantiated by existing FM outsourcing literature. Originality / value Highlights the practical importance of seeking to understand socially embedded realities for improved FM contract performance. Considers the human resource element of change via FM outsourcing. Takes a social constructivist approach to organisational sense-making. Uses examples from focused, critical ethnographies to explore existing FM contracting dynamics. Qualitative investigations into related organisational circumstances are encouraged to further develop an evidence base

The influence of shifting Pacific identities in learning : the experience of parents raising children of mixed Pacific ethnicities : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Education at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

Identity construction for the Pacific population in Aotearoa/New Zealand remains a politically and contextually contested arena that shifts according to the socio-cultural interactions within the immediate and external environment of an individual. This study views parents as agents of change and explores ethnic transmission and cultural identity development through the eyes of parents raising children of mixed Pacific ethnicities. This qualitative study employed both Western and Pacific methodologies to collect and analyse data and used the talanoa method to engage the insights and experiences of five couples. Social constructionism and Bronfenbrenner’s (2005) ecological systems theory provided a framework to explain the dynamics of social interactions and external conditions that influence the constructs of peoples’ lived realities. This study found that families, peers, and schools influence interactions that shift and impact the cultural identity development and resiliency of children with mixed Pacific ethnicities. In addition to this, societal perceptions, racism, and stereotypes are external environmental conditions that further impact cultural identity development and resiliency. The metaphor of a balancing act illustrates the challenges and strategies parents use to manage family and cultural expectations as well as the efforts required to maintain access and opportunities to cultural knowledge, values and practices. The findings suggest that a culturally responsive education can work to minimise intolerance, exclusion, and racism experienced by an individual. Key recommendations include the promotion of identity development education that serves to empower individuals and parents to nurture positive identities and resilience in the mixed Pacific generation